7 Responses

re: HP CEO: Apple likely to take away PC leadership position next year — as if that is going to happen. Besides, Xbox, PlayStation, Wii are more computer than tablets and nobody is counting them. Just more Apple hype.

There is some dispute among the firms that track sales numbers and market share as to whether tablets should be included. Those who argue that they should say that consumers often weigh whether to buy a new notebook or netbook against buying a tablet, and that their general-computer capabilities put them in that category.

Personally, I think it’s a separate category. But if you’re competing for consumer dollars in the way HP is, it makes some sense to look at the tablets as PCs.

Game consoles are never considered to be general-use PCs, regardless of whether their guts are similar to PCs, because they are considered specialty entertainment devices. Now, this could change over time as consoles like the Xbox and PS3 become entertainment/information hubs. But for the people whose job it is to track market share, that day isn’t here yet.

hmmmm, given all the limitations, seems tablets are also specialty entertainment devices. The categorization with the Xbox will radically change when it ends up running Win8 — after all, it far exceeds ARM processers in performance.

Even though Apple’s share of the computer market has quadrupled (not counting iPads) it is still only 15.4% of Apple’s revenue going forward. The iPhone is about 50% and iPads 22%. The iTunes/Music store generates almost one third the revenue of computers.

Quite a dramatic change since just a few years ago when Apple was perceived as Microsoft’s little brother.

@davesmall: Who perceived Apple as MS little brother?? — you?? Apple is hardware that happens to sell OSs for its hardware. MS is and has always been software — granted they do have a pretty good Xbox and have been trying to get into the phone business — not a hardware company. You seem to feel Apple’s success detracts from MS when nothing could be further from the truth. To the contrary, a testiment to MS success is the number of Apple computer users that also purchase Windows in order to get stuff done.

Most are migrating from Windows to Mac, and there are lots of them, might put up Windows to be able to access old legacy files moved over from their old PC. Most of them are migrating from ancient Windows XP to Macs.

re: You say tomato and I say tomato (yeah, it doesn’t translate well in text). For whatever reason, Apple computer users still buy Windows OS in droves — that’s one of the main review features, how well does the new Apple computer / Apple OS run Windows.